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Sunday, January 19, 2014

North Carolina governor wages war on the unemployed

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

One year ago a terrorist offensive began in North Carolina.At the urging of that state’s capitalist
class whose economic interests he represents, the governor, Pat McCrory, a
Republican, signed a bill that cut the amount and the length of time, North Carolina’s
unemployed could receive unemployment benefits. He did this even though North
Carolina had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.

McCrory’s defense was that the state’s unemployment trust
fund was spent and the state had to borrow money from the federal government to
pay the unemployed----those that the market discards----the pittance that puts
some food in their mouths at least. The trust fund was financed through
business taxes. “We’re going to pay down
that debt, make the system solvent and provide an economic climate that allows
businesses, large and small to put people back to work.” McCrory announced
to the media at the time.

The new law took effect six months later and the effect was
immediate. The maximum weekly benefit was cut from $535 to $350 and the length
of time the unemployed could receive benefits was cut from 26 weeks to between
12 and 20.

But as Business Week pointed out last week, “That was only half the blow”.

According to the magazine, reducing state benefits “Violated the terms of the federal
program—which is intended, not replace state aid---so workers in North Carolina
were also disqualified from receiving federal benefits”.

His actions, McCrory told the local media last week, were
intended to send people “back to where
they came from.” Workers were migrating to North Carolina he claims to get
the generous unemployment benefits the state offershe said. Or, which is the often cited reason why unemployed
numbers are too high, workers were living too high on the hog and wouldn’t get
off their lazy asses and get a job.

McCrory points to the unemployment rate that dropped from
8.4% to 7.4% between July and November last year as evidence that his plan
worked.

Numerous sources have disputed that argument as in North
Carolina, like most other states, a recipient has to work a certain amount of
time before being eligible for unemployment benefits. “Although there are exceptions, the easiest way to think
about this is someone would have had to work in the state for around six of the
last 15 months in order to be eligible for benefits.”, writes Mark Blinker for WRAL.com

Rather
than poachers coming to NC for the benefits or lazy workers sitting at home
watching TV, the drop in unemployment numbers is better explained by noting
that the long-term unemployed have simply stopped looking for work and have
dropped out of the labor force altogether. North Carolina’s labor force
participation was at its lowest in 37 years last October according to
BusinessWeek.

The
right wing anti-worker Republican Rand Paul, like all rich people, has to
justify his wealth and success as a
product of his own hard work which means workers and the poor are poor (er) by
choice.It’s the same logic they use
when they say that a Bangladeshi garment worker or Cambodian electronics
workers are “willing” to work for
less.All these characters have nothing
but contempt for workers. If we were smarter, worked harder, we’d be
businesspeople or tech entrepreneurs or doctors running their sickness
industrial complex. Paul relies predominantly on poor and backward white’s for
votes so he tells Fox news he supports 26 weeks of benefits but “Beyond that you do a disservice to these
workers” because it encourages them to be part of the “perpetual unemployed group”.Life
is all about ones’ perspective for sure. I always thought warren Buffet, the
Queen of England or Donald Trump were the “perpetual
unemployed”.

If
the rest of the country follows North Carolina’s lead, “The.3 million people losing their benefits are going to be in the
same position as the 170,000 people here who have lost theirs” Aaron
Chatterji, an economist at Duke University tells BW.

The
federal government wants to avoid that and is talking about extending the
benefits nationally and there is some chatter going on among Senators.Obama and others are arguing for extensions
as it will hurt the economy having a million or more workers without any
assistance.That opens up some dangerous
doors when it comes to social unrest when we add the millions more that have
dropped out of the labor force and are not counted in the official
statistics.There are also many more
millions of working poor.The more
astute politicians of the 1% like Obama recognizes that a lot of anger still
percolates beneath the surface of society and that needs to be contained.

McCrory
worked for Duke energy for 28 years in management positions. His bio is a bit
laughable when it says:

“A management-training
program put Pat through a rotation of digging ditches and climbing electric
poles as well as stints in various management jobs from human resources to
economic development.” He’s a ditch digger now. It reminds me of that
picture of his friend, the imbecile George W Bush on his ranch in Texas.Put a cowboy hat on his head and a chain saw
in his hand and he’s just a regular blue-collar guy. Unfortunately, some
workers fall for it.

McCrory
and the rest of them, Republicans and Democrats, (look at Brown here in
California) are economic terrorists. Of course, in relation to many workers
throughout the world they wage a more direct and violent terrorism against
whole populations; they have to cloak their activities behind all sorts of lies
and falsifications domestically.

The
1% is sitting on a few trillion dollars that they refuse to invest in the
economy because profits are not sufficiently guaranteed.They
are stashing another $26 trillion or so in offshore accounts avoiding
taxes.The banks are making record
profits as they spend billions more of our money on legal defense to keep their
officers out of jail for their role in bringing the economy to the edge of
collapse.

Their
rotten system cannot put 25 to 30 million people to work in jobs that pay the
rent, or the moneylender the mortgage, and there are millions more on minimum
wage or less.

No
worries, they say to themselves, they still have jails.

But
history shows that the US working class does not lay dormant forever. Even
today, there are hundreds and thousands of independent and isolated protests
and campaigns around all sorts of social issues. Then there is the tremendous
success of the socialist Kshama
Sawant winning a seat on Seattle City Council and her comrade (both are
members of Socialist Alternative) Ty
Moore coming close in Minneapolis. This is a reflection of the desire for
political changes that exists in US society.In Lorraine County Illinois as well, a group of independent trade
unionists were elected to the council. It is a somewhat different development
to the Seattle situation but worth paying attention to and encouraging
nevertheless.

What
is lacking here is a national movement, a broad national direct action
movement that can draw all the forces together that are actually fighting
against the austerity agenda of the 1%, fighting for increased social services,
jobs, a living minimum wage, health care, education transportation, against
racism and sexism etc. In other words, what we need, what is important for
workers to live secure productive lives, not what is acceptable to the two
parties of the 1%.